Interview Experience

My profile:

• Professional experience: 1Y 11M (when the process began, Currently: 2Y 4M)
• Previous Company: 1 product-based mid-size, 1 FAANG
• Preparation:
• LC: 125 Easy | 450 Medium | 175 Hard
• No Competitions
• Language of code: Python 3

Phone Interview

I was asked an open-ended question. Ex: Write a code to show top news articles to a user. The interviewer wasn't looking for a particular answer and he made this very clear as soon as we started. The question involved tacking which subsystem I want to solve and code for, then finding out the accurate data structure for it. I was able to identify the accurate classes that I could make. I quickly wrote the skeleton of those classes and moved on to the core logic. Here, I used a dictionary (map) and heap which was well suited for my question. The interviewer threw a few follow-up questions on this which I answered.

Result: Hire (Bump up to L4. I had started with L3)

Onsite Interview

Note: All my rounds were DSA rounds, when I say system design here. I mean questions like Design Twitter

Round 1:

I was asked to design a system. Google likes asking these questions. So those who are unfamiliar with these, please check them out on . Ex: Design Search Autocomplete System I quickly identified the 3-4 main functions that I would be using. I used the combination of a queue (sliding window) and a dictionary (hashmap). I wrote the code for this and he was happy with it. He asked me about the drawbacks of this system. My system was using lazy deletion and could take up way too much RAM in case of a DOS/DDOS attack. I told him how I'll solve it. I gave him an architecture solution instead of a code one and he was very happy with it.

Result: Strong hire

Round 2:

Again I was given a system. However, in this round, the main question was very straightforward. It used just a dictionary (hashmap) in the beginning. However, there were a lot of follow-ups for this. Follow-up 1: He asked me to make a minor change to the dictionary storing logic. I quickly did that and it seemed good. Follow-up 2: He asked me how this system would work in real life. I gave him a bit of architecture that I was thinking of. I was asked to write a game loop (infinite running loop) after I explained that I would use long polling. Follow-up 3: I misinterpreted this follow-up and took some time to clarify it. This was a pretty challenging task as I had to look up the future (the dictionary looks up the past) and then make a decision. I gave him a queue-based solution for this.

Result: Hire

Round 3:

This was one of the hardest questions I have ever seen. For context, the question itself was around 1 and a half pages long (with images). It was a game theory question that followed Zermelo's theorem (please correct me if I am wrong) so there was always going to be a winner. So basically I had to decide the optimal strategy and tell who would win at the end of the game. Determining how to represent the state of the game and explaining my logic behind it took around 15 mins. I was able to break this into smaller subproblems and tackled each case first. I used DP + DFS + combinatorics. I was barely able to complete the code at the end of the interview. Calculating the time complexity for this was way too hard (at least for me). However, I had thought of an upper bound but it never came to that.

Result: Strong hire

Round 4:

This was the Googlyness round. These rounds are usually my strong points and where I am naturally strong. However, knowing that my tech rounds went well, panic and anxiety got me. I was offset during the whole round and wasn't happy with how I performed. Regarding the details of the rounds, mostly I was asked about my previous experience and significant projects. He asked me behavioral questions based on them which I answered using the STAR pattern.

Result: Lean Hire

Post Interview: The recruiter called me hours after my Googlyness round telling me that my interviews went very well. I thanked her and the process for team fit/ HC began. I was affected by the hiring freeze and it took me a total of months from the start of the phone interview till the offer. Matched with 1 other team which found me to be a fit but the position closed after a revised headcount was taken.

Key takeaways:

• Keep talking and never assume that something is understood. Explain as much as you can.
• If you can't think of the best approach, try to compensate for it with something else.
• Try to go outside the code and explain how you can relate this to a product.
• Recruiter is your best friend during this time
• Lastly, enjoy the interviews. Interviewers are fun and they love to have an interesting technical conversation